Tag: robotics
All the articles with the tag "robotics".
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The State of Robotics in 2026: A Citation-Grounded Survey of Research and Companies
A citation-grounded survey of robotics research as it stands in May 2026 — VLA foundation models (RT-2, OpenVLA, π0, π0.5, Helix, Gemini Robotics), imitation-learning architectures (Diffusion Policy, ACT/ALOHA, RDT-1B), cross-embodiment data (Open X-Embodiment, DROID), whole-body humanoid control (HOVER, ASAP, OmniH2O), reward design with LLMs (Eureka, DrEureka), world models for robotics (Cosmos, Genie, 1X), simulators (Isaac Lab, Genesis, RoboCasa), and the company landscape (Figure, Tesla, Boston Dynamics, Apptronik, Agility, 1X, Unitree, Physical Intelligence, Skild AI, XPENG, UBTECH, Fourier). With venue-by-venue references from ICLR, ICML, NeurIPS, CoRL, RSS, ICRA, and Science Robotics.
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Navigating Blind: How Drones Fly Without GPS — and Why It Matters More Than Ever
GPS jamming and spoofing are now routine in contested airspace, and indoor/underground operations have always lived without it. This post is a technical survey of GPS-denied drone navigation in 2026 — VIO, visual SLAM, terrain-relative navigation, satellite image matching, magnetic anomaly navigation (MagNav), LiDAR SLAM, and multi-modal factor-graph fusion. Deep dives into satellite image matching (the most promising daytime approach) and MagNav (the dark horse that works at night, in fog, and is unjammable). With lessons from Ukraine, the open problems, and a practical stack for builders.
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The Perception–Planning Gap: What's Actually Hard About Visual AI in 2026
A technical survey of where visual perception and planning research actually stands in 2026. Pixel-level perception is largely solved at the representation layer, but perception-for-action — geometry, physics, dexterity, long-horizon control — is not. Reading the recent literature on JEPA, DreamerV3, Sora-as-world-model, RT-2 / OpenVLA / π0, Helix, Gemini Robotics, DUSt3R / MASt3R / VGGT, and the world-model evaluation papers (WorldModelBench, Physion, IntPhys 2), the through-line is the same: we have strong representations and architectural ideas, but the data, evaluation, and physical-grounding infrastructure to validate them is what's missing.
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From Luddites to Humanoids: What the Steam-Engine Era Tells Us About AI Robotics Replacing Human Labor
The Luddites were not anti-technology. They were protesting a bundle of wage collapse, skill devaluation, and lost autonomy that mechanization triggered but did not constitute. Reading the modern economics literature — Acemoglu & Restrepo, Allen on the Engels' Pause, Caprettini & Voth on Captain Swing, Autor on polarization, Brynjolfsson on the productivity J-curve — the question for the age of perception-aware and lingual robotics is not whether the reinstatement effect will eventually arrive. It is whether the adjustment window has been compressed past the point where the historical safety valves can open in time.